Almats in Navi Mumbai: The art of making books and diaries
Almats Branding Solutions, a Mumbai-based commercial and book printing firm shifted its operation from Lower Parel, into a 28,000 sq/ft area in Navi Mumbai. This unit is packed with presses from KBA, Ryobi and Heidelberg. While the post-press includes machines from Welbound, Joy D-zign, Stahl and Muller Martini. The export market is in the middle of this operation.
Words and photographs: Sachin Shardul
25 Dec 2013 | By PrintWeek India
Almats in Navi Mumbai: The art of making books and diaries
Almats' new 28,000 sq/ft building in Navi Mumbai houses pre-press, press and post-press operations under one roof
The pre-press design team produce creative artworks for children book and diaries
The Basysprint 860 UV platesetter ensures right resolution of dots on printing plates. Almats says it "produces good results at 2,400 dpi"
Fujifilm Lo-Chem CTP plate processor makes optimum use of chemistry for plate outputs
Printing plates from TechNova
Ryobi's plate punching unit is used for accurate punch register
Almats deploys Ryobi 920 four-colour offset press to print fashion catalogues
KBA Rapida 66 has crossed more than nine million impressions mark since its installation
Brand-new four-colour Heidelberg SM 74 prints premium Doodle Diaries, a brand owned by Almats Branding Solutions
Heidelberg two-colour perfector press that produces calendars and books
Sordz 25x36-inch two-colour being readied for book printing
This single-colour press has been with Almats since it began its print journey
Almats relies on the Xerox Docucolor for short-run jobs
Printed jobs await their turn to head to the finishing department
When PrintWeek visited Almats a few days ago, a 10-tonne crane was busy hauling a Muller Martini stitching machine to the shopfloor
In progress: Installation for the Muller Martini stitching machine
Sandeep Kulkarni (r), head of binding and finishing operations, supervises the installation process
Almats has invested in a raft of finishing equipment and the book pressing machine from Joy D-Zign is one of them
Children books is a key product in the Almats portfolio
Another WIP installation at the print firm is Welbound's six-clamp perfect binder to churn out perfect bound books
Being tested: The PUReBind Ultra for flawless binding
Recently installed: the Pickwel gathering system from Welbound is an offline gathering system. The machine is equipped with the latest defect detection system
Almats' strong post-press set-up includes two Stahl folders
A Diploma folder has bolstered the folding operations
Being installed: Brand-new Chinese three-knife trimmer
Preventive maintenance being carried out on the new automatic lamination machine from Champion
Since the arrival of automatic lamination machine, the manual lamination machine remains idle but is used for short-run
Sheeting machine preparing the Axis Bank envelopes for die-punching
Printed sheets kept ready for die-punching
An employee preparing the job for punching by pressing the printed sheets. This ensures a single sheet while punching
Die-punched sheets which will be taken to the window patching machine and the envelope making machine
After the window patching process the sheets are converted to envelopes on an envelopdemaking machine
Another kit which adorns the finishing shopfloor is an envelope making machine. It produces more than 5,000 envelopes in a single shift
Diaries and calendars being packed and kept ready for final packing
Making a lasting impression: The debossing machine creates special effects on diaries
A rough and tough debossing die made of alloy
On its way to the Almats' finished goods warehouse
The packed books and diaries kept ready for dispatch ...
Origin Logistic has been appointed by Almats as its logistic partner. Almats has provided a special floor to Origin so that they can carry out the operations effectively
The production team along with Sopan (r), a shopfloor veteran and Lalit Naik, operations manager
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